For those among us whose beliefs require a personification of evil other than Michael Jackson or Gallegher, there is, of course the Devil. Thanks to the tersely phrased wisdom of fore-bearers, we know just where to find him: In the details. The implication is that whenever one is embarked on a task of some sort, seemingly minor decisions, made in an off-hand manor, can cause ruin no matter how much thought is put into bigger, well thought out plans. But a more subtle interpretation is that lurking in the small, insignificant areas of our lives, there is evil to be found.

Any comfortable, middle-class milquetoast knows what I'm talking about. It's annoying when your cell phone dies while you're trying to order Chinese take-out from your car, but it's really not a big deal. You'll just have to order when you get there and wait the five minutes it takes to package the already cooked chow mien. But every day is chock-full of these little slights to one's ego -- the constant reminders that one's life is insignificant, and the horrifying realization that you probably don't rate as highly with God as you think you should.

It's a bit like a thousand tiny demons, constantly poking you with their needle sized pitchforks. Not only do you realize that the universe doesn't love you, it doesn't hate you sufficiently enough to kill you outright. Short of outright tragedy, all of your problems are going to be very small and very unimportant. But then again, so are your triumphs. Getting up earlier than you normally do, yet feeling well rested isn't on the same level as winning the lottery or having sex with a movie star, but the fact is that it's all the achievement that most of us are entitled to every now and again.

It should be obvious to everybody that there's a double-standards at work here; we all experience small set- backs and successes, every single day. Over time, they tend to even out and you're no better off than where you started. But try voicing a complaint about some minor inconvenience. As you speak, your inner voice begins to rationalize, "Ok, so you missed your bus... no big deal right? Shake it off you big baby."

On the other hand, tell someone that you didn't hit a single red light while driving to work; if you're observant, you'll hear a sense of sublime joy creep into your voice. Little things can make us intensely happy. Since most of us will never experience large achievements it makes sense to enjoy small victories. Start enjoying the small moments of goodness in your day to day life on a regular basis, and soon you come to magnify them to a ridiculous degree. The problem is that, once you've lost your sense of proportion, little slights against you can become grotesque slurs -- as big as the triumphs you experience, though as opposite as can be. Small instances of good luck become a welcome thumbs-up, as if the world decided that, from here on out, your life will begin improving bit by bit until you realize your ambitions; whereas inconveniences become cold, skeletal hands, clutching at your ankles, dragging you down into abyssian despair.

Neither of these perceptions are true, but it takes a tremendous amount of double-think to allow oneself to relish the small benefit while dismissing the equally small (but polar opposite) set-back. Yet, what other options does one have? If you save your emotional responses only for the grandest and most tragic moments, what lies beyond? Few of us will reach the highest pinnacles of success, or the darkest nadir of failure -- if we choose to respond only to those things, most of us would become the walking dead, the emotionally numbed.

From this line of thinking (which doesn't qualify as "reasoned", even under the broadest criteria), we come to understand the importance of double-standards in our daily lives. Double-standards make the world work, and allow us to function by sparing us the unclouded vision of the meaninglessness of existence. What else, besides these much maligned paradoxes of thought, could allow us to elevate the discovery of just one more double-stuff Oreo into a triumph of the human spirit, while simultaneously minimizing the realization that the bread in one's sandwich is moldy to almost nothing? Double-standards are the only thing that allow us, moral creatures though we are, to cut in front of people in line and drive the way we do, without a thought given to those we've incovenienced. Without them, we would have no recourse but to seek out the most virtuous of our species and give them all of our material possessions, wish them luck in their future endeavors, and allow them to partake of our very flesh so that it may give them strength to carry the human race into a glorious future at their benevolent hands.

Thus, the double standard is the world's first great invention. Altruism and greed, carefully balanced over millennia, have created the modern world. Enjoy it while it lasts.

-B. C. Silvia